

John Zorn’s rep as the angry bad boy of the downtown avant-garde has always been a bit of a caricature. His music has long stressed wit and beauty as much as squeals and hollers. But in the 2000's, he tapped into a buoyant, almost gentle lyricism while still sounding distinctively Zorn. It started in 2005 with a new series of compositions that he called “Book of Angels: Masada Book Two.” Masada was the quartet he formed in the early ‘90s (one of that decade’s most exciting and signature jazz bands). More to the point here, it was a book of eventually over 300 compositions that he wrote—jazz heads, each written in one of the two “Jewish scales,” a major scale with the 2nd note flat or a minor scale with the 4th note sharp. Zorn didn’t specify instrumentation in this sheet music, so the tunes could be played by any sort of ensemble. First there was the quartet (with Zorn himself on alto sax); then there were the Masada String Trio, Bar Kokhba (a sextet with strings and percussion), Electric Masada, and others. “Book of Angels” continued this tradition, but with more emphasis on the ethereal and lyrical than on the noisy and intense (though there is still some of the latter, just as the original series had plenty of the former).